Senior AI Engineer & Full-Stack Lead · Punjab, Pakistan
About Tahir Nazir
Senior AI Engineer and full-stack lead with 5+ years shipping AI-powered web products to production — RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, LLM integrations (Claude, OpenAI, Groq) and MCP tooling, on AWS with Next.js, Node.js, Python and Go. I build my own tools in the open: ContextZero, a VS Code extension for managing what every AI coding agent knows about your projects, and PresenceZero, a self-hosted lead finder — both MIT-licensed. At Nextpak Agile Solutions I grew from developer to senior engineer and team lead, delivering end to end for 20+ international clients and mentoring the engineers around me. I'm Top Rated on Upwork with a 100% job success score.
Why I write this blog
Every post on the blog starts from a problem I hit while building — a Claude Code error behind a corporate proxy, an MCP server that will not load, a RAG pipeline returning the wrong chunks. Each one quotes the exact error text, separates the distinct causes, and gives the fix I tested for each, with dated sources. I use Claude Code, Cursor and MCP tooling every day in client work, so the posts are written from that use rather than from documentation alone.
Experience
Senior AI Engineer & Team Lead — Nextpak Agile Solutions
Jun 2022 – Present
- Architected and shipped RAG chatbots, multi-modal AI pipelines, and agentic automation integrated into production web apps (Node.js, NestJS, FastAPI, Python).
- Cut infrastructure costs by ~$300/month by designing a Docker-based local dev environment (MinIO, MailHog, RabbitMQ, Redis, PostgreSQL) that replaced paid cloud services during development.
- Delivered SaaS and AI-driven products for 20+ international clients with zero-downtime CI/CD on AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, Cognito).
- Introduced AI-powered dev workflows with MCP tooling (Sentry, GitHub, Context7, Playwright) and ran internal workshops to adopt them across the team.
- Grew from developer to senior engineer and team lead — mentoring junior engineers and owning features end to end.
Full-Stack & AI Engineer — Freelance / Independent
Nov 2020 – Present
- Built end-to-end web and AI products for international clients across SaaS, ed-tech, and automation.
- Integrated LLM providers, payments, real-time messaging and video, and third-party APIs.
- Deployed and maintained applications on AWS and serverless platforms.
Things I have built
- Throughline — AI Product. Builds a knowledge brain over your real engineering work, then drafts posts in your voice paired with on-brand generated images. Multi-model routing across Vertex AI, Gemini, Grok and Midjourney. Nothing auto-posts — you stay the editor.
- PresenceZero — Open Source. Self-hosted lead finder for freelance devs and agencies. Scan a location and category; it flags businesses with no site, a dead site or a parked domain, checks matching domain availability via RDAP, and scores each lead 0–100.
- ContextZero — Developer Tool. One VS Code sidebar for the rules, memory and skills every AI coding agent knows about each project — Claude Code, Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity and the AGENTS.md standard, with monorepos nesting properly.
- ZeroPort — Developer Tool. A Windows app that answers one question fast: what is using this port? It lists every listening TCP port, reads the command line to name the real service — FastAPI, Next.js, Postgres — and stops it safely, revalidating process identity before any kill.
- Absolute Zero Toolbox — Developer Tool. A Chrome side-panel workbench holding 32 tools for developers and testers — JSON diffing, token decoding, request replay, DNS and certificate lookups — plus an encrypted vault for development credentials that never leaves your machine.
- Bella Vista — Voice & Chat AI. A working voice-and-chat ordering agent for restaurants. Takes phone and web orders end to end, books tables, and answers menu questions across both channels — built to prove the stack for food-service automation.
- KeySpotter — Chrome extension. Warns you when a website exposes secret API keys or test-mode payment keys; it scans locally and found keys never leave your browser.
Client work and every other project: all work and case studies.
Recognition
- Top Rated on Upwork with a 100% job success score — Upwork profile
- Tech Titan Award, Nextpak Agile Solutions (2024) — Recognized for multi-stack expertise, strong problem-solving, and handling complex technical challenges.
- Level One Full Stack Developer, Nextpak Agile Solutions (2025) — Awarded for technical excellence, reliability, and consistent delivery of scalable solutions.
Education and languages
Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, Virtual University of Pakistan (2020 – 2024). Languages: English (professional), Urdu (advanced), Punjabi (native).
Articles by Tahir
Get in touch
Email hello@its-tahir.com, or find me on LinkedIn and GitHub.